


You're a Wonder

by FB Wickersham (perpetfic)



Series: The Blue Stones [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Female Lead, First Love, Supernatural - Freeform, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-07 00:50:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11612490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/FB%20Wickersham
Summary: Hazel and Gretel during Hazel's time training at the House. A friendship taking a turn to something else.





	You're a Wonder

“What did you learn today?” Gretel asked, appearing next to Hazel in a brief roll of fog that Hazel had come to associate with comfort.

“We were working with fire magic.” Hazel held up her bandaged right arm. “I got second degree burns trying to turn the flame.”

Gretel sat next to her on the ground, making no noise even though she wore a full skirt and bustle. “Does it hurt?”

“No. Auntie Marge put some burn cream on it then laid a healing spell over it. It’s not going to heal much faster than normal, but it takes the pain away.”

“That’s good.” Gretel reached out, her hand brushing through Hazel’s arm with only a slight shiver from Hazel to show she’d felt the tingle. “When I first started working for them, the Aunties told me there would be times being a ghost would be useful. Not just for the speed, but for not being able to touch. I thought they were being foolish, but…” She trailed her fingers up Hazel’s injured arm and smiled when Hazel giggled at the tickle. “I can make you laugh while you hurt and not hurt you. I like that.”

Hazel pushed her hair out of her face and watched Gretel settle with her legs straight out, and her arms behind her, holding her up. “Auntie Betty says I graduate in six months. I’ll be a full Stone just in time for college.”

“College,” Gretel said with a wistful sigh she had sometimes. “I was going to go to college.”

“Really?” Hazel cocked her head at the idea. “Not a lot of women went back in your time.”

“No, they didn’t.” Gretel straightened up and reached for her hair. She pulled her bun loose—one of the few changes she could make to her appearance—and she combed her fingers through her hair. “Mama was worried it would make me unladylike. Papa was hopeful it would.”

Hazel laughed. “Really? Why?”

“Papa wanted to be certain I could make up my own mind. Even if my future husband didn’t always follow my advice, he wanted to be sure I was heard. Mama couldn’t argue against that. As long as I could remember, he always said she was his best confidante because she spoke her mind clearly and with no room for argument. It made him think before speaking.”

Hazel laughed without meaning to. “Sounds like the opposite of my family. Mom and Dad were always after each other, and after they divorced, they both came after me.”

“You’ve told me some of it. I don’t like them.”

Hazel felt her chest tighten at the mutinous look that went across Gretel’s features. She felt so loved when Gretel looked like that in regards to herself. She felt safe. “I don’t know how I feel about them. Even working with Auntie Nadine in therapy, it’s confusing. I know I love Granny, though. So, it helps.”

“Her grandmother was one of the Aunties, right?”

“Yeah. Auntie Hazel, like I’ll be someday. She was one of the first to train here at the House.” Hazel looked across the lawn at the House, a ramshackle Victorian that had been added on as needed over time. It was a maze of hallways and uneven staircases, and Hazel loved it like a beloved family pet. “Do you remember her? I asked Auntie Ellie, and she said you would have been around then.”

Gretel shook her head. Her hair swayed back and forth, lifting a bit like it had a mind of its own, an unconscious move, Hazel knew, that was simply part of being a ghost. “No, but if she were here when I was first saved, I may not have noticed. Coming back from a vengeful space, it takes a lot to pull your soul back together.”

Hazel looked at Gretel. She was semi-translucent, as usual, and the light filtered through her like through a cloudy prism. There was a rainbow on Hazel’s white bandages, where Gretel’s shadow should be. Hazel wanted to capture it in a jar, carry a bit of Gretel with her wherever she went. 

“Were you in love before you died?” Hazel asked, feeling breathless and brave and stupid all at once. Like watching the fire she bent coming back at her and realizing she couldn’t stop it striking her.

Gretel looked up at the sky, then flopped on her back, flinging her arms over her head. “When I was alive, I would say no, but after all these years to learn so much, I say yes.”

“Who was it? If I can ask.”

Gretel turned her head and smiled. There were tiny, yellow flowers standing up in her hair. “Of course you can ask. You’re my friend.”

Hazel felt herself flush. They’d met badly, Hazel pacing the front parlor while everyone was asleep because insomnia had been a monster to her since she was a child, and Gretel had simply been wandering the house as she sometimes did. She’d swooped into the front parlor, Hazel had screeched, and the Aunties had popped in from their various rooms, ready to fight. 

“Hazel, for fuck’s sake,” Auntie Ellie had wheezed, ignoring the look that clearly read, “language” from Auntie Tessa. “It’s Gretel. She’s one of ours. What the shit.”

“I’m a messenger,” Gretel had told Hazel from across the room, hands out and open in an apologetic manner. “I’m sorry I scared you. I’ll be friends if you like.”

“There was a girl,” Gretel was saying, and it pulled Hazel from her memory. “Lisel. She was from a well-to-do German family as well. Everyone sort of stuck to their own back then. I like that people do that less now.”

“And you loved her?”

“Yes.” Gretel looked up at the sky, and her whole face was flowers. Hazel wished there was some way to take a picture of it. She looked so beautiful. 

“It was common then for girls to exchange love notes and Valentines,” Gretel continued, missing the way Hazel was looking at her. “You could have crushes, but Lisel and I went beyond that. I didn’t know at the time. But the first time a pair of Aunties explained they’d be married if they were allowed, I realized that’s what I’d had with Lisel. We had talked about it, running away together to get away from the marriage plans, the baby plans. Neither of us wanted that.” Gretel shrugged. “Or maybe she did later, but I was nineteen when I died, and I knew the one thing I didn’t like was the idea of marrying a man.”

Hazel shifted so she was lying on her stomach, her arms crossed so she could rest her chin on her hands, neither of which were bandaged. “Did you ever look her up after? I’m sure Auntie Lena could pull all the history you wanted.”

“I did it in the early 1900s. I realized it was likely she’d died. I wondered if she was like me, killed in violence and left to vengeance. There was an Auntie then—Auntie Cecil—she did the digging. Lisel married and had three children. Her diaries and her letters were destroyed by her children after her death.”

“If I’ve learned anything in the Real History course with Auntie Lena, her children destroying her papers could easily mean she loved you like you loved her.”

“That’s what Auntie Cecil said.” Gretel turned her head and smiled at Hazel. It was sad. “I almost hope not. I don’t want to think of her being unhappy her whole life.”

“I’m sure she wasn’t.” It didn’t feel like a lie when Hazel said it, and she was grateful. “Before dad stopped talking to me, he used to tell me that in the worst days of the marriage, he always got happiness from me. I bet she had the same thing. I bet she loved her children.”

“You’re so kind, Hazel.” Gretel reached out a hand, and it was a small buzz of electric feeling against Hazel’s cheek. “I’m so happy we’re friends.”

 _I’m in love with you,_ Hazel thought, but she bit her bottom lip rather than say it. “Me, too,” she said instead because being in love felt too large and important to take head-on when she had already played with fire and lost once today.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Blue Stone training takes some years, in case you were curious.
> 
> 2\. It's unrequited now, but I do not write tragic queers, so trust me when I say I have plans.
> 
> 3\. The House is all Aunties. They were all working Blue Stones like Hazel is now. Not all Blue Stones become Aunties. But all Aunties have to have been Blue Stones.


End file.
